Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
Government

Defense Department Eyes Hacker Con For New Recruits 154

Posted by Soulskill from the conflict-of-beards dept.
alphadogg writes "The US Air Force has found an unlikely source of new recruits: the yearly Defcon hacking conference, which has been running since Thursday in Las Vegas. Col. Michael Convertino came to Defcon for the first time last year, and after finding about 60 good candidates for both enlisted and civilian positions, decided to come back again. Federal agencies have only recently begun embracing the hacker crowd. When US Department of Defense director of futures exploration Jim Christy hosted his first Defcon 'Meet the Fed' panel in 1999, he was one of two people onstage. At this week's Defcon, there may be several thousand federal employees in attendance, he said."
Communications

Apple Kills Google Voice Apps On the iPhone 541

Posted by kdawson from the hey-wait-isn't-he-on-our-board dept.
molnarcs writes "Apple pulls Google Voice-enabled applications from its App Store, citing duplication of functionality. The move affects both Google's official Google Voice and third party apps like Voice Central. Sean Kovacs, main developer of GV Mobile, says that he had personal approval for his app from Phil Shiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing, last April. TechCrunch's Jason Kincaid suspects AT&T behind the move."
Games

Which Game Series Would You Reboot? 1120

Posted by Soulskill from the star-control-please dept.
Franchise reboots are all the rage these days in Hollywood, and the trend is starting to creep into the games industry as well. The Guardian's games blog is running a story discussing a few examples and pondering likely candidates for future reboots. Quoting: "If anything, the concept of the reboot makes more sense in the videogame sector than it does in movies. For a start, games are complex entities, with each new iteration in a familiar series adding many, many hours of fresh narrative content. Entering, say, the Zelda, Resident Evil, Half-Life, Dragon Quest or Metal Gear worlds at this stage must be massively intimidating — even if the developers go to great lengths to make each entry work as a singular, self-contained entity within the canon. Also, videogames are going through a paradigm shift in terms of popular appeal at the moment. The faithful audience of young males has been joined by new demographics brought in by the Wii, PC casual games, and now the iPhone. Many of these people may be vaguely aware of long-running game brands, but won't have a clue about the key characters, sign post events and basic gameplay mechanisms." So, which series (or individual title) would you like to see rebooted?
Space

Submission + - Longest Solar Eclipse of the Century 33 pics (blogspot.com)

Submitted by
Vinod
Vinod writes: "Yesterday thousands of people around the Asia witnessed the longest Solar Eclipse of the Century. Though it was not clearly visible in some parts due to overcast weather, but still thousands people gathered to view this spectacular event. Yesterday's Solar Eclipse lasted for nearly 6 to 7 minutes making a record of longest Solar Eclipse of the century. In India thousands of people gathered at the banks of the rivers to take a holy dip. Here is a collection of 33 beautiful images of Solar Eclipse around the World."
Patents

Submission + - USPTO Gives Microsoft Credit for Lotus' Homework

Submitted by
theodp
theodp writes: "On Tuesday, the USPTO granted Microsoft a patent for 'Email Emotiflags' despite ample evidence of a circa-1996 Lotus Notes precedent called Mood Stamps, sender-chosen emoticons that appear next to inbox messages. Among those seemingly aware of the existence of Mood Stamps is Microsoft Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie, who appears to have fielded questions about the feature while at Lotus. While simply Googling for 'Email Emotiflags' would have turned up evidence of this prior art (including a /. discussion), the USPTO came up empty after instead going with the more-upscale Google Scholar and patent databases for its search effort. Can we count on Ozzie to do-the-right-thing and give the USPTO a heads-up?"
Space

Submission + - White House Panel Seeks Input On Spaceflight Plans (nasa.gov)

Submitted by Neil H.
Neil H. writes: The Augustine Commission, commissioned by the White House and NASA to provide an independent review of the current US human spaceflight program and potential new directions, is seeking public input on a document describing the preliminary beyond-LEO (Low Earth Orbit) exploration scenarios they're analyzing. The destination-based scenarios, designed with NASA's current budget in mind, range from a Lunar Base (essentially NASA's current plan), to "Mars First" (human exploration of Mars ASAP), to "Flexible Path" (initially focused on several destinations in shallow gravity wells, such as Lagrange points, near-Earth asteroids, and the Martian moon Phobos). The Commission is also seeking input on the issues of engaging commercial spaceflight, in-space refueling, and coordinating human and robotic exploration.
Social Networks

Social Networking Behavioral Agreements At Work? 326

Posted by kdawson from the in-case-they-need-another-reason-to-fire-you dept.
r0nc0 writes "My company (a Fortune 15 company) has recently required everyone that accesses the company portal to accept or decline an 'agreement' that governs the use of social networking. It basically states that any discussion of the company or any of the work that you do, whether at the office or at home, must be governed by their rules of social networking. Naturally these rules are that you never say anything bad or negative about the company, nor do you say anything bad or negative about anything. It's presented like a EULA, but if you decline more than 3 times your manager is notified. Naturally I declined it each time until my manager complained to me about all the email he was getting about me not accepting the agreement, so I went ahead and accepted, knowing that anybody who cares would just post anonymously anyway. This is the first time I've run into a forced agreement about social networking, and the agreement is so broad that it can't possibly be enforced. I've tried pointing out that agreements like that only drive people away and aren't necessary anyway, but I might as well talk to a brick wall. Has anyone else out there run into social networking behavioral agreements like this?"
Space

Small Asteroid To Buzz Earth 171

Posted by kdawson from the just-a-flesh-wound dept.
ddelmonte writes in to tell us about a small near-earth object, discovered just 2 days ago, that is expected to pass within 64,000 km of our planet on March 2, 13:44 UT. NEO 2009 DD45 will be well inside the Moon's orbit and just under twice the altitude of geosynchronous satellites. According to Sky and Telescope, 2009 DD45's closest approach will be over the Pacific west of Tahiti, so observers in Australia, Japan, and perhaps Hawaii will have the best chance of spotting it with, say, an 8-in. telescope. Here's where you can generate an ephemeris of the object for your location. At closest approach NEO 2009 DD45 will be moving half a degree per minute and peaking around magnitude 10.5. It will be brighter than 13th magnitude for only a few hours.
Displays

Why Kindle 2's Screen Took 12 Years and $150 Million 524

Posted by timothy from the it-went-usps dept.
waderoush writes "Critics are eating up everything about Amazon's Kindle 2 e-book reader except its $359 price tag. But if you think that's expensive, take a look behind the Kindle at E Ink, the Cambridge, MA, company that has spent $150 million since 1997 developing the electronic paper display that is the Kindle's coolest feature. In the company's first interview since the Kindle 2 came out, E Ink CEO Russ Wilcox says it took far longer than expected to make the microcapsule-based e-paper film not only legible, but durable and manufacturable. Now that the Kindle 2 is finally getting readers to take e-books seriously, however, Wilcox says he sees a profitable future in which many book, magazine, and newspaper publishers will turn to e-paper, if only to save money on printing and delivery. (Silicon Alley Insider recently calculated that the New York Times could save more than $300 million a year by shutting down its presses and buying every subscriber a Kindle). 'What we've got here is a technology that could be saving the world $80 billion a year,' Wilcox says."
Security

Submission + - Defendant must tell government his password (volokh.com) 1

Submitted by
sohp
sohp writes: "Over at The Volokh Conspiracy, reports are out that the case of a man who invoked the 5th amendment when asked to supply the password to decrypt his hard drive to allow police to search for child pornography has a new development. A judge has overturned the original magistrate's decision allowing the defense and has ordered Sebastien Boucher to supply the prosecutors with a decrypted hard disk. Note that the order is not that he produce the key — just that he provide an unencrypted copy."
Government

Wikileaks Publishes $1B of Public Domain Research Reports 231

Posted by timothy from the well-there's-a-nice-circularity-to-that dept.
laird writes "Wikileaks has released nearly a billion dollars worth of quasi-secret reports commissioned by the United States Congress. The 6,780 reports, current as of this month, comprise over 127,000 pages of material on some of the most contentious issues in the nation, from the U.S. relationship with Israel to abortion legislation. Nearly 2,300 of the reports were updated in the last 12 months, while the oldest report goes back to 1990. The release represents the total output of the Congressional Research Service (CRS) electronically available to Congressional offices. The CRS is Congress's analytical agency and has a budget in excess of $100M per year. Although all CRS reports are legally in the public domain, they are quasi-secret because the CRS, as a matter of policy, makes the reports available only to members of Congress, Congressional committees and select sister agencies such as the GAO. Members of Congress are free to selectively release CRS reports to the public but are only motivated to do so when they feel the results would assist them politically. Universally embarrassing reports are kept quiet."
Power

Universal Power Adapter Struggling For Support 277

Posted by Soulskill from the currently-a-shocking-resistance-to-unfulfilled-potential dept.
Ian Lamont writes "Last year, there was a lot of hopeful discussion surrounding an initiative to have the consumer electronics industry standardize their products on a USB-based universal power adapter devised by Green Plug. Eight months later, the effort has stalled. The reason: manufacturers have balked from using Green Plug's technology. '... Gadget makers seem to have no compelling financial incentive to adopt Green Plug's technology. It would require them to add Green Plug's chip, or similar hardware and software, into every phone, camera, or music player they build, making them more expensive and more complicated to build. Another stumbling block for manufacturers: A universal power supply would kill the market for replacement power supplies. Manufacturers sell these at a steep markup price to customers who lose or break the original one that came with the device, and aren't tech-savvy enough to procure a low-cost generic replacement.' Green Plug is now trying to drum up public outcry through a (slow) website, but the number of supportive comments and votes remains relatively low."

Comment Re:big deal? (Score 2, Insightful) 176

by foobarb (#26526653) Attached to: Presidential Inauguration Hardware and Other Challenges

D, E, and

F) He sounds like he believes and means what he says.

Clinton is smart but he lies when he opens his mouth. Obama somehow gives off credibility and authenticity ... one would hope by being credible and authentic, but we shall see. Integrity is rare anywhere, and you don't expect to see it in politicians anymore, at least not at the P level, because we've had a bad run of those here lately.

IIRC the Kennedy election events were very similar in tone (rock starish). More swooning girls then. Media was slow but there was less of it, so speeches were broadcast and people listened to them. Rhetoric was more formal and poetic then, but less reality based perhaps.

Then, as now, there was a renewed hope for dramatic change for the better, an end to the war maybe, a generational shift to the younger, more progressive culture. The euphoria in these hopeful elections arises from the unexpected possibility that we (well, many of we) just might find ourselves in a world that better reflects our own values and priorities.

Both then and now opportunities opened up for women and minorities to move closer to parity with WASP (white anglo-saxon protestant) men and to have a chance to have our issues raised. Again, after years of corporate greed and government spying, the people today have more common ground than they did in the Kennedy era though, whether they realize it or not. Interesting times.

Slashdot Top Deals

You're using a keyboard! How quaint!

Close